Facebook has announced it’s buying virtual reality specialist Oculus for about $US2 billion in cash and shares.

The social media behemoth said it would build on Oculus’s technology, particularly its virtual reality headset aimed at gamers, and seek to develop the technology for other areas such as communications, education, and entertainment.

The deal will see Oculus shareholders receive $US400 million in cash plus 23.1 million Facebook shares in the deal. Facebook called hailed Oculus as the leader in immersive virtual reality technology, with a strong following among developers.

The company has already garnered more than 75,000 orders for the $350 Oculus Rift headset development kits :: Read the full article »»»»

For Google 2013 was simply another year, steaming on to solidified its place at the center of almost every arena in internet economy.

In the quadrangle of the internet age, sidled up with Apple, Facebook and Amazon, Google is the only one to have competed in all arenas including: retail, hardware, television, social networking and search. Although it performed better in some arenas – wink wink, Plus Google – it’s a hardship to write-off Google from any of them.

Google’s 2013 success was the result of a largish range of new product releases, acquisitions and long term project coming to fruition. From Google Glass, Chromecast, Play,Moto X and all the way back to it’s roots, search.

The one thing Google hasn’t done is remained still. We’ve rounded up some of Google’s most important moments of this past year, moments that contributed to the giants exponential tech-rise :: Read the full article »»»»

Its not very often that a completely new interface comes along, even less common is a new interface that actually makes sense. The Balloon Input Device – BID – may just be a little bit of both, a rare whacky idea that may actually work.

Using only two sensors the developers detect various actions, squeeze, rub, poke. A pressure sensor measures changes to the air pressure inside the balloon, with changes indicating a squeeze or poke. The microphone is able to detect movement over the balloons surface.

A part of the new generation of tactile input devices, the next generation touch interface. At the moment the BID only provides audio feedback when it senses one of the actions but this can easily be redirected to triggering other actions. Read the full article »»»»

Technology advances in many directions, memory for example increases in both speed and capacity. Corsair, the manufacturer of high performance computer parts and gaming goodness have upped the ante one more time. Throwing down the gauntlet to fellow memory manufacturers with the release of their high-speed 8GB Vengeance DDR3 RAM. Worlds may well be colliding with the introduction of the new Vengeance modules with Workstations using professionals and Über Gamers both competing to buy the new Corsair sticks of RAM. With the capacity of normally slow Server and Workstation RAM but with the high speed performance of gaming memory the Vengeance will be in high demand. Stack four of these octo monsters in your gaming rig for an astounding 32GB of system memory that will let you take on any task , edit that new 4k hi-def film while playing the latest first person shooter and rendering Toy Story 4 in the background.

“Vengeance DDR3 memory is the premier choice for reliable, overclockable DRAM for system builders on a budget,” said Giovanni Sena, Director of Memory Products at Corsair. “Our kits based on 8GB modules give builders, system integrators, and gaming enthusiasts the power to break the 16GB barrier.”, Corsair Read the full article »»»»

Kogans’s new Android-powered Agora 8-inch and Agora 10-inch tablets join Kogan’s Agora line, which also includes laptops and a 7-inch Agora tablet that launched earlier this year.

Budget tablet-pc’s seem to be the order of the week. While not as easy on the pocket as the Indian made Aakash tablet unveiled earlier this week. Our favorite consumer electronics manufacturer and online retailer, Kogan, has announced its own budget tablet offerings. Aside from the screen size and resolution – 800 x 600 for the 8-inch and 1024 x 768 for the 10-inch – the specs of the two models are identical. Both feature a 4:3 ratio capacitive touchscreen, are powered by a 1 Ghz Cortex A8 CPU and 512 MB of RAM, and come running Google Android 2.3 with access to the Android Market. There’s also an internal G-Sensor, 2-megapixel front-facing camera and 4 GB of onboard storage, expandable up to 36 GB via microSD card. Read the full article »»»»

Our favorite Korean semiconductor behemoth, Samsung, has just announced it’s newest and fastest version of the Exynos mobile processor. The 4212, a dual-core ARM Cortex A9 clocked at 1.5GHz. 4212 is built using a 32mn process using high-K metal gate technology that that Samsungs says makes it 30 percent more efficient and 25 percent faster and a 50 per cent increase in 3D graphics grunt over the previous Exynos – 4210 – chip. The 4210 was capable of many impressive feats, unfortunately its 3D abilities were hampered by the limits of its HDMI controller.

The new cpu gets version 1.4 and hence the freedom to run stereoscopic imagery at an impressive 70fps. The chips will be available in Q4 of this year. The chip comes too late for the Galaxy S II LTE but you can expect to see it in future super-smart-phones before too long.

The Exynos 4212 incorporates a rich portfolio of advanced codec accelerators that support digital still images, video recording and play-back at 1080p full-HD resolution, an image signal processor and an on-chip HDMI 1.4 interface. Read the full article »»»»

Let the Tablet Wars Begin: Amazon’s unveiling of the Kindle tablet will certainly shake up the industry and pose one of the biggest threats to the Apple iPad – which is why the technology world has its eyes on the online retailer as it launches itself into the ubergadget world…

Before Amazon even had a chance to release the Kindle Fire at their press event, the big news had already slipped out. The Amazon Kindle Fire will be a 7-inch Android tablet with a $199 price tag. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos took center stage to unveiled the company’s latest branding icon. Slotted for release on November 15, 2011, the Kindle Fire is about to shake it up. Read the full article »»»»